Paul decided to let the observation which he planned to make at noon settle the puzzle of position. The moment demanded that he should give his thoughts to it and the living, and not to the past and its dead. Still as he laid the log down on the desk again he turned to the page which began it and read, in the style of the ancient sea formula:
"Log of the bark Daphne, 1,252 tons burthen, of Liverpool, England, John McGavock, master, on her voyage from Sydney, N. S. W., toward San Francisco, U. S. A."
And with something of boyish pride the keeper of the log—it was not in the skipper's writing—had posted his name with boldness at the head of the list of the ship's company: "William Elston, chief officer." It was the imagination of youth gilding the rank. It seemed to speak that the Daphne had given the boy his first berth as mate.
"And they murdered you, William Elston, and you, too, John McGavock," said Paul with a sad bitterness, turning away from the desk.
A frightened cry from Emily, a smothered sob and the patter of her bare feet carried Paul through the open door, but not quickly enough to cut off her view of the still occupant of the skipper's room. She shrank into his arms shuddering, and as he pressed her to him she tried to crush her sobs against his breast.
"Don't be frightened—don't be frightened, dearheart," he crooned to her. His lips found her brow, her eyes, her mouth.
"I—I——Oh, Paul, I thought you had gone—away," she sobbed. "You were—were so long."
Paul had not been away from the deck more than five minutes, but the time had seemed to her thrice and thrice again as long.
Brokenly she told him how, as she had entered the door through which she had seen him disappear, her eyes had found the figure of the mate stretched in his room.
"Then—there is another—one—in there!" she went on. "Oh, Paul, never leave me again! Will you, dear! Will you? Not until death comes to take us both?"